Bridging Psychological Safety and Skill Guidance: An Adaptive Robotic Interview Coach

TL;DR

This paper presents an adaptive robotic interview coach that balances psychological safety and instructional guidance through an empirical, iterative design process, resulting in a new framework for dynamic robotic coaching.

Contribution

It introduces the Adaptive Scaffolding Ecosystem, a novel framework for balancing safety and guidance in robotic coaching based on empirical findings.

Findings

Identified the Safety-Guidance Gap in robotic coaching.

Discovered the Scaffolding Paradox related to feedback timing and specificity.

Developed an Agency-Driven Interaction Layer to resolve tensions.

Abstract

Social robots hold promise for reducing job interview anxiety, yet designing agents that provide both psychological safety and instructional guidance remains challenging. Through a three-phase iterative design study (N = 8), we empirically mapped this tension. Phase I revealed a "Safety-Guidance Gap": while a Person-Centered Therapy (PCT) robot established safety (d = 3.27), users felt insufficiently coached. Phase II identified a "Scaffolding Paradox": rigid feedback caused cognitive overload, while delayed feedback lacked specificity. In Phase III, we resolved these tensions by developing an Agency-Driven Interaction Layer. Synthesizing our empirical findings, we propose the Adaptive Scaffolding Ecosystem, a conceptual framework that redefines robotic coaching not as a static script, but as a dynamic balance between affective support and instructional challenge, mediated by user agency.